by Ryk E. Spoor
“Jason, I have a bad feeling about this,” Sylvie said quietly.
“No kidding!” I snapped. Then I grinned faintly. “Sorry, Syl. No call for sarcasm. But you’re right, this is one heck of a mess.”
She shook her head. “I don’t mean it that way, Jason. The vibes are all wrong. There’s something…unnatural about this.”
That stopped me cold. Over the years, I’ve come to rely on Sylvie’s “feelings”; I don’t really believe in ESP and all that crap, but…she has a hell of an intuition that’s saved my job and my life on more than one occasion. “Oh. Well, we’ll see about it. Now I’d better call the cops; we’re going to be answering questions for a while.”
Normally, I might have asked her more about what she meant; but something about the way she’d said “unnatural” bothered me. I zipped back to the office and grabbed up my phone; I had the local police station on speed-dial. I worked with them a lot. The sergeant on duty assured me that someone would be along shortly. I was just hanging up when I heard a muffled scream.
I had the gun out again and was around the corner instantly. Sylvie was kneeling over the body, one hand on Lewis’ coat, the other over her mouth. “What’s wrong? Jesus, Syl, you scared the daylights out of me! And what the hell are you doing even near the body? You know what—”
She pointed a finger. “Explain that, mister information man.”
I looked.
On the side of Lewis’ neck, where the coat collar had covered, were two red marks. Small red dots, right over the carotid artery.
Two puncture marks.
“So he got bit by a couple mosquitoes. Big deal. There are two very happy bugs flying high tonight.”
Sylvie gave me a look she usually reserves for those who tell her that crystals are only good for radios and jewelry. “That is not what I meant, and you know that perfectly well. This man was obviously assaulted by a nosferatu.”
“Say what? Sounds like a Mexican pastry.”
“Jason, you are being deliberately obtuse. With all the darn horror novels you read, you know what nosferatu means.”
I nodded and sighed. “Okay, yeah. Nosferatu. The Undead. A vampire. Gimme a break, Syl. I may read the novels but I don’t live them. I think you’ve been reading too much of your woo-woo book stock lately.”
“And I think that you are doing what you always laugh at the characters in your books for doing: refusing to see the obvious.”
I opened my mouth to answer, but at that moment the wail of sirens interrupted, which was something of a relief. That’s the craziest discussion I’ve ever been in and maybe we can just forget she started it. Red and blue lights flashed at the alleyway—jeez, it must be a quiet night out there. Besides the locals, I saw two New York State Troopers; they must’ve been cruising the I-90 spur from Albany and heard about Lewis over the radio. I felt more comfortable as I spotted a familiar figure in the unmistakable uniform of the Morgantown PD coming forward.
Lieutenant Renee Reisman knelt and did a cursory once-over, her brown hair brushing her shoulders. “Either of you touch anything?” she asked.
I was glad it was Renee. We’d gone to school together and that made things a little easier. “I touched his face, just to check if he was still warm, which he was. Sylvie moved his collar a bit to see if he’d had his throat cut or something. Other than that, the only thing I did was open the door; he was leaning up against the door and fell in.”
“Okay.” She was one of the more modern types; instead of scribbling it all down in a notebook, a little voice-activated recorder was noting every word. “You’re both going to have to come down and make some statements.”
“I know the routine, Renee. Oh, and I know you’ll need to keep the door open during the picture taking and all; here’s the key. Lock up when you’re done.”
I told the sergeant we’d be taking my car; he pulled the PD cruiser out and waited while I started up Mjölnir. It was true enough that I could afford a better car than a Dodge Dart, even a silver-and-black one, but I kinda like a car that doesn’t crumple from a light breeze…and it wasn’t as though Mjölnir was exactly a factory-standard car, either.
Sylvie’s statement didn’t take long; apparently she chose not to expound on her theory to the cops, which proved she had more common sense than most people. Mine took a couple of hours since I had to explain about Lewis and why he might choose to die somewhere in my vicinity. A few years back, I’d been in the area when two drug kingpins happened to get wiped. Then Elias got me involved in another case and a potential lead fell out of a closed window. I was nearby. Cops don’t like it when one person keeps turning up around bodies.
It was one-thirty when we finally got out. I took a left at Chisolm Street and pulled into Denny’s. Sylvie was oddly quiet the whole time. Except for ordering, she didn’t say anything until we were already eating. “Jason. We have to talk.”
“Okay. Shoot.”
“I know that you don’t believe in…a lot of the Powers. But you have to admit that my predictions and senses have proven useful before.”
“I can’t argue with that, Syl. But those were…ordinary occasions.” Admittedly, ordinary occasions where she gave me a warning in time to save my life, when I saw no way she could have known what was going to happen…“But now you’re talking about late-night horror movies suddenly doing a walk-on in real life.”
She nodded. “Maybe you can’t feel it, Jase, but I am a true sensitive. I felt the Powers in the air about that poor man’s body. And that noise, Jason. Big as Lewis was, even he wouldn’t make that kind of noise just falling against the door. Something threw him, Jason, threw him hard enough to shake the windows.”
I nodded unwillingly. I’d already thought of that; honestly, I didn’t think Lewis could have made that kind of impact even if he’d been trying to batter the door down.
“Jase, it’s about time you faced the fact that there are some things that you are not going to find classified on a database somewhere, comfortably cross-indexed and referenced. But I’m not going to argue about it, not now. Just do me a favor and check into it, okay?”
I sighed. “Okay, I’ll nose around and see what I can find out. No offense, but I hope this time your feelings are haywire.”
Her blue eyes looked levelly into mine. “Believe me, Jason, I hope so too.”
Chapter 2: Picture Imperfect
I got back to Wood’s Information Service at two forty-five. The cops were gone but one of those wide yellow tapes was around the entire area. Damn.
I went to the pay phone on the corner (luckily there still are any…pretty soon, I’ll have to get a cell phone myself), dialed the station, and asked for Lieutenant Reisman. I was in luck. She was still in. “Reisman here. What is it, Jason?”
“You know, I happen to live in my place of business. Do you have to block off the entire building?”
“Sorry,” she said. “Hold on a minute.”
It was actually five minutes. “Okay, here’s the deal. You can go in, but only use the front entrance and stay out of that back hallway.”
“But I store a lot of stuff there.”
“Sorry, that’s the breaks. Tell your informants to die elsewhere from now on. Anything else?”
“Yeah. This thing has Sylvie spooked. She’s really nervous about this, and being in the business she is, it gives her weird ideas.”
“So what can I do?”
“Just give me a call when the ME report comes through. If there’s nothing odd on it, it’ll make things much easier.”
She was quiet for a moment. “Look, Jason, medical examiner reports aren’t supposed to be public knowledge, first off. But second, what do you mean by ‘odd’?”
I grinned, though she couldn’t tell. “Believe me, Lieutenant, you’ll know it if you see it.”
“Huh.” She knew I was being deliberately evasive, but she also knew I probably had a reason. She’d push later if events warranted. “All right, Jason, here’s what I’ll
do. If the ME’s report is what I consider normal, which includes normal assaults, heart attacks, and so on, I’ll call you and tell you just that, ‘normal.’ If I see something I consider odd, I’ll let you know.”
“Thanks, Renee. I owe you one.”
“You got that straight. Good night.”
I went back to my building and up to my bedroom. I was drifting off to sleep when I sat bolt upright, suddenly wide awake.
The figure I had seen in the alley, backlighted by a streetlamp. I thought it had moved away too fast to follow in the fog. But the “Tamara’s Tanning” neon sign had been on its left, and the lit sign for WKIL radio on its right. One or the other should have flickered as it passed across them.
Both had stayed shining steadily. But that was impossible.
It was a long time before I finally got to sleep.
* * *
I got up at twelve-thirty; that yellow tape would keep away the customers who might drop by, and as a consultant I keep irregular hours anyway. I was just sitting down with my ham sandwich breakfast when the phone rang. “Wood’s Information Service, Jason Wood speaking.”
“This is Lieutenant Reisman, Wood. I’ve just read the ME report.”
“And?”
“And I would like to know what your girlfriend thinks is going on here, Mr. Wood.”
“Syl’s not my girlfriend.” Not exactly anyway, I thought. “What did the ME find?”
“It’s what he didn’t find that’s the problem.” Renee’s voice was tinged with uncertainty. “Your friend Lewis wasn’t in great shape—cirrhosis, bronchitis, and various minor malnutrition things—but none of those killed him. He’d also suffered several bruises; someone grabbed him with great force, and after death the body was thrown into your door. But death was not due to violence of the standard sort.”
“Well, what did kill him then?”
“The ME can’t yet say how it happened,” the lieutenant said quietly, “but the cause of death was blood loss.” She took a breath and finished. “There wasn’t a drop of blood left in his body.”
I made a mental note that I owed Syl a big apology. “Not a drop, huh?”
“Well, technically speaking, that’s not true. The ME told me that it’s physically impossible to get all the blood out of a corpse. But it was as bloodless as if someone had slit his throat with a razor and then hung him up to drain. The thing that’s really bothering the ME is that the man had no wounds that account for the blood loss. He’ll have the detailed autopsy done in a few days, but from what he said I doubt he’s going to find anything.”
“You’re probably right. Well, thanks, Renee.”
“Hold on just one minute, mister! You at least owe me an explanation.”
“Do you really want one?”
She was silent for a minute. Then, “Yeah. Yeah, I do. Because there’s one other thing that I haven’t told you yet.”
I waited.
After a few moments, she said, “All right, here it is. This body is not the first we’ve found in this condition. The others all had wounds that could explain the loss…but the ME told me privately that there were certain indications that made him think that they were inflicted after death.”
“Okay, Lieutenant, but you are not going to like it.”
“I don’t like it now, Wood. Let me have it.”
“Sylvie thinks we are dealing with a vampire.”
There was a long silence. “Would you repeat that?”
“A vampire. As in Dracula.”
Another silence. “Yeah. And damned if I don’t half-believe it, either. I must be getting gullible. But no way can I take this to my supervisor. He’s the most closed-minded son-of-a-bitch who ever wore blue.”
I laughed. “I don’t expect you to do anything about it. Just keep an eye out. I’m going to start some research of my own. If we are dealing with something…” I trailed off, paused, then force myself to say it, “…paranormal, I doubt that normal approaches will work.”
“God, listen to us. Vampires? I’ll call you later, Jason. This is too weird for me to handle right now.”
I cradled the receiver. I couldn’t blame her for needing time to sort it all out. Hell, I was stunned that she accepted it as much as she did. Somewhere in the back of her mind, she must already have decided that something was very wrong about those other deaths.
All right. Let’s get to work, Jason.
I went upstairs into my library, started pulling down books—folklore references I’d collected over the years, mostly, including Vampires: A World Survey, which was the closest thing to a scholarly compendium on the subject I’d ever found. Most of these things came from my information addiction overlapping with my fiction reading; I couldn’t resist trying to fact check even my horror novels. Bad facts didn’t stop me from reading them, of course, but I liked to know what was real and was wasn’t.
I sat down at my workstation, started keying in information from each book. The World Survey emphasized what I’d already known: the vampire myth existed in some form in almost every corner of the world—from South America to Japan, China to Europe. The abilities and weaknesses of the creatures varied wildly, from the original shambling zombielike corpses of Eastern Europe to China and Japan’s strange “hopping vampires” to…
I glanced back at the shelves and wondered if I should include anything from the fictional side. Yes, at first glance that sounded stupid, but if I was going to assume there were such things as…vampires, there was the possibility that one or more books had been written by people who knew that they existed and something of what they were like.
And…again if I was right…they’d already apparently shown two of the characteristics often attributed to fictional vampires: superhuman strength and the ability to disappear or turn into mist.
I sighed, got up, and picked out a selection of vampire novels—the original Dracula, Yarbro’s Saint Germain books, Rice’s Lestat, a few others that covered a range of tastes. I’ll extract the key points as possibilities and put them in with a low but significant weight.
After three hours, my neck and arms started getting really cramped. I broke for a late lunch or maybe dinner, headed back towards the computer just as the phone rang.
“Wood’s Information Ser—”
“Hello, Wood.”
I knew that gravel-scraping voice, even though it usually didn’t call before the night shift. Then I looked at the clock and realized it was the night shift. That’s what you get for sleeping until after noon. “Hi, Elias. I’ve got your photos done.”
“Anything good?”
“Let’s just say I’ll be real surprised if we aren’t electing a new assemblyman soon.”
He laughed, a quick explosive chortle. “With an attitude like that, I don’t see your getting on jury duty, that’s for sure. Listen, I’ll be over to pick ’em up soon. ’Bout an hour and a half good?”
“Sure thing, Elias.”
I needed a break from blood-sucking freaks anyway. I pulled the envelope from the safe, rechecking the pictures on the disk against the negatives. By the time my recheck was done, Elias was there. “Hey there, Jase,” he said, ducking slightly as he entered. He really didn’t have to—the doorway’s seven feet high and he’s six foot six—but it was a habit he had. Add a gangly frame, a sharp-edged nose, black hair, black eyes, and a slight stoop; Elias Klein always reminded me of a youthful buzzard. He came into my office to get a quick look. He liked them all, until we got to the last one.
“Nice joke, Jason.”
“What do you mean, joke? It looks pretty good to me.”
“Oh, sure, Assemblyman Connors looks just lovely. But without Verne Domingo to complete the picture it’s nothing but a publicity shot.”
I pointed to the next to last. “What about that one? They’re swapping right there, what more could you ask for?”
“That’s just a second-string doper, Jason! Domingo’s the big man, the guy we’ve been after the whole time I’
ve been on this case, and that is the photo that should show him.”
I shrugged. “Too bad. Next time make sure he’s in the picture.”
“Don’t give me that, Wood! I know he was in that shot, I was the one looking through the viewfinder.”
I handed him the negative. “Look for yourself.”
He stared at it. “What the hell?” Then he swung towards me. “Wood, you’d better not be dicking around with the evidence! I’ve been on this for eight damn months, and if you’re—”
“Oh, cut the tough cop act, Elias. You know damn well that I only play jokes; I don’t mess with my clients’ stuff. If I did, would the city PD be paying me ten grand a year? That negative is the one you gave me and it’s in the same shape as it was when it got here.”
“But that’s impossible.” Elias glared at the negative as though a hard stare would make the missing figure materialize. “If you look through the viewfinder of an SLR, what you see is what you get. Besides, dammit, look at your own enhancement. He’s got his mouth half-open, saying something, and he’s about to shake hands. Then look at that angle. Do you put your hand out twenty feet from the guy you’re going to shake with?”
“Nope.” I was mystified now. Then the memory of a quote spun across my mind:
This time there could be no error, for the man was close to me, and I could see him over my shoulder. But there was no reflection of him in my mirror!
I took the negative and stared at it again. “You’re right, Elias. Mr. Domingo should have been in this picture. That leaves only one explanation.”
He looked at me. “And that is…?”
“That you are dealing with someone whose image doesn’t appear on film.”
Elias didn’t like that at all, but he had to admit that I had no motive to screw around with the negatives. “So what’re you saying? He’s got some kind of Star Trek cloaking device that wipes his image off film? I won’t swallow it.”
“Trust me, Elias, you don’t want to know what I think. Since this negative is worthless as is, mind if I keep it? Maybe there’s some kind of latent image I could bring up.”